Four distinguished scholars—David Bordwell, Timothy Breen, Jose Casanova and Wayne Wiegand—began residencies at the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress on Jan. 9.  They will conduct research at the Library for four months.

David Bordwell, the Jacques Ledoux Professor of Film Studies Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, is a film theorist and historian.  He has written more than 15 volumes on many aspects of modern cinema.  At the Kluge Center, Bordwell will hold the Kluge Chair in Modern Culture.  He will be drawing on the vast resources available in the Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division to work on a book project titled “The Art of Cinema 1908-1920.”

Timothy Breen, the William Smith Mason Professor of American History Emeritus at Northwestern University, is an Early American historian interested in the history of political thought, material culture and cultural anthropology.  At the Kluge Center, he will hold the Kluge Chair in American Law and Governance.  Breen will be working on a project titled “Enforcing The American Revolution: Law and Disorder During the War for Independence” exploring how American revolutionaries managed to sustain, over eight long years of war, effective resistance to numerous domestic enemies, who could have mounted a devastating counter-revolution.

Jose Casanova is a professor in the Department of Sociology at Georgetown University and head of Georgetown’s Berkley Center Program on Globalization, Religion and the Secular.  He has published works on a broad range of subjects, including religion and globalization, migration and religious pluralism, transnational religions and sociological theory.  At the Kluge Center, Casanova will hold the Kluge Chair in Countries and Cultures of the North.  He will be working on a project titled “The Jesuits Through the Prism of Globalization, Globalization Through a Jesuit Prism,” which will offer new critical perspectives on the Jesuits as a global Catholic religious order, while also contributing to a new and partially revisionist theory of globalization.

Wayne A. Wiegand is the William Summers Professor of Library and Information Studies and a professor of American Studies at the Florida State University.  He specializes in American library and American book history, with numerous scholarly publications in both areas.  At the Kluge Center, Wiegand will hold the position of Distinguished Visiting Scholar.  He will work on a project “The American Public School Library: A History,” analyzing the cherished role of public school libraries over the generations of U.S. history. 

Each of these scholars will deliver a public lecture towards the end of their time in residence.

Through a generous endowment from John W. Kluge, the Library of Congress established the Kluge Center in 2000 to bring together the world's best thinkers to energize one another, to distill wisdom from the Library's rich resources, and to interact with policymakers in Washington.

The Library of Congress is the world’s largest library, offering access to the creative record of the United States—and extensive materials from around the world—both on site and online. It is the main research arm of the U.S. Congress and the home of the U.S. Copyright Office. Explore collections, reference services and other programs and plan a visit at loc.gov, access the official site for U.S. federal legislative information at congress.gov, and register creative works of authorship at copyright.gov.